(SAN FRANCISCO) — A fellow tech executive was found guilty in a San Francisco courtroom on Tuesday for the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee.
Prosecutors said Nima Momeni stabbed Lee three times with a kitchen knife after driving him to a secluded area in April 2023.
Defense attorneys for Momeni previously said he acted in self defense in response to an attempted assault by an intoxicated Lee. Momeni had pleaded not guilty.
Lee, a former executive at cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin, was killed in the early morning hours on April 4, 2023, in the San Francisco neighborhood of Rincon Hill, according to police.
At about 2 a.m., camera footage showed Lee and Momeni leaving Lee’s hotel and getting into Momeni’s car, a BMW Z4, prosecutors said in a court filing.
Video shows the BMW drive to a secluded and dark area where the two men got out of the car. Momeni “moved toward” Lee and the BMW drove away from the scene at high speed, according to the court document.
Prosecutors have alleged that Momeni killed Lee over the alleged sexual assault of Momeni’s sister by an acquaintance of Lee.
Paula Canny, the defense attorney for Momeni, said at a hearing in May that Lee’s death arose from a mix of self-defense and accidental harm.
“There was no premeditation,” Canny said.
On the witness stand last month, Momeni said Lee had attacked him in a fit of anger touched off by a joke. Momeni had teased Lee, saying that he would rather spend his last night in town with his family than going to a strip club, where the two were possibly headed, Momeni recounted.
In the scuffle that ensued, Momeni did not realize that Lee had been fatally injured, said Momeni, the owner of an Emeryville, California-based company called Expand IT.
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